Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 3

Orlando Pearson

Description

VOLUME III of THE REDACTED SHERLOCK HOLMES presents six more scintillating stories from the pen of Orlando Pearson about the great Baker Street detective. Holmes investigates:- Alarming events at the medical practice next door to Dr Watson;- Missing autograph manuscripts in Fascist Italy;- Climate change and a mysterious birth in London in 1894/95;- Tax evasion by the London Softwear Company;- The role of cricket in the rise of Hitler; and - A Kafkaesque plot which foreshadows the banking crash of 2007/08Mr Pearson mixes the Canon with events from history both very recent and from earlier epochs to show-case the talents of the Baker Street sleuth. In this latest volume:- Dr Anstruther's Practice;- The Red Priest's Treasure Trove;- A Seasonal Tale;- A Dutch Sandwich;- A New Line of Attack; and- The Trial of Joseph Carr

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 30 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781787050167
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Redacted Sherlock Holmes
Volume III
Orlando Pearson




Published in the UK in 2016 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2016 Orlando Pearson
The right of Orlando Pearson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MX Publishing or Andrews UK Limited.
The words spoken by the girl in the stable in A Seasonal Tale are based on extracts from High Flight by John Gillespie Magee. The author asserts no claim to the text and uses it for solely for artistic purposes.




For My Family



Dr Anstruther’s Practice
My reader may well consider the events described under the title “The Stockbroker’s Clerk” to have been concluded definitively. That story started on a Saturday morning with Holmes picking me up from my newly opened medical practice in Paddington and the narrative then switched location to Birmingham. It ended that same evening with the apprehension in London of the case’s main criminal by the police, and with the apprehension of his main accomplice in Birmingham by Holmes and me posing as an accountant and a clerk.
The main events of the day had reached their end by seven o’clock, but by the time the police had been summoned and statements taken, it was nearly midnight. Our petitioner, the stockbroker’s clerk Mr Hall Pycroft, had hotel accommodation in Birmingham and elected to return to it. I was anxious to return to my wife after my unexpected day-long absence and to spend the Sunday attending to the matters that inevitably arise when one has just opened a new business. Holmes also wished to return to London at the earliest opportunity and, accordingly, he and I boarded the train that trundles slowly through the night between Birmingham and London, just as Mr Pycroft had done the night before.
I was exhausted after the long and event-filled day, but perhaps due to the swift resolution of the case, Holmes seemed more alert than ever. We were the only passengers in our compartment and, while I stretched out on the seats, Holmes sat lost in thought. I could see something was still troubling him and I knew that any interjection from me would be unwelcome.
At last he too stretched out and said, “It’s no good Watson, it won’t come to me. There remains something - some observation that I made today - that I am still unable to account for.”
“Really, Holmes? You seem to me to have solved the Pycroft case as completely as can be imagined.”
“Oh, that! The case for which I have dragged you from London to Birmingham this morning was a matter of such superficiality and my role in it so modest, I was going to suggest you withhold it from publication. The only reason why you may wish to place it before the public is to advertise your services as a doctor and to demonstrate your skill in reviving a man who was seeking to hang himself - for all that you may merely have postponed his appointment with the gallows.”
I could see that Holmes had more to say and waited for him to continue. As I waited, I turned over in my head whether the matter which Holmes proposed I should advertise would help or hinder the development of my practice.
“There is some trifling matter,” went on Holmes at last, his brow still furrowed and his flow of words slow, “some small thing of which I took note, which in the helter-skelter of solving this Birmingham case I failed to investigate. But it will not now occur to me what it is.”
He drew on his pipe and sat back with his eyelids drawn three-quarters of the way over his eyes. There was a silence. I forbore to interrupt my friend’s concentration as he struggled to recall the matter to which he had referred.
The night train from Birmingham to London proceeds slowly and stays off the main routes to avoid arriving in London too early. This may be why it pitched and rocked far more than one might normally expect in these times of fast, comfortable and convenient rail travel. It was as the train swayed over a particularly bumpy set of points that Holmes suddenly sat upright:
“By Jove, yes! The uneven stairs!”
“The stairs! What stairs?” I asked, puzzled as to their relevance to the mystery to which we had addressed ourselves that day.
“The stairs of your house and of your neighbour’s house.”
I ran my practice from a house next door to another house occupied by a medical practitioner. Both practices had opened at the same time thirty years previously and that morning Holmes had deduced that I had the better of the two because the steps leading up from the street to my front-door were more worn than those of my neighbour. I waited for my friend to continue.
“You said this morning that the revenue from your practice last year amounted to little more than three hundred pounds. This must mean that your neighbour is making much less.”
“My practice was in decline when I bought it, Holmes,” I said a little defensively, “because my predecessor became ill. It had previously turned over far more than three hundred pounds.”
“Nevertheless, from the state of the stairs, your neighbour must earn considerably less in fee income than yours.”
“That may be so. What of it?” I said, slightly nettled by my friend’s sudden interest in my financial affairs and those of my neighbour.
“Yet this accommodating neighbour of yours can afford to neglect his practice to the extent that he can ask you to mind it in his absence. Moreover, he actually takes more days away than you do, for when I ask you to join me in an investigation he is in your debt in terms of days worked.”
I had no comment to make to this and waited for Holmes to continue.
“Does it not strike you as strange that your neighbour can afford so much time away from his work even though his takings are much lower than yours?”
“My predecessor in my practice, Farquhar, charged higher fees than Anstruther, his neighbour,” I said cautiously, not wishing to answer the question. “Farquhar therefore attracted more well-to-do people whereas Anstruther drew people from the local factories, for whom a visit to the doctor represented a substantial expense.”
“Yet your steps are three inches more worn down than his, so not only does he charge his patients less than your predecessor did, but he has fewer of them.”
I remained silent, but Holmes persisted.
“You see my point, Watson. Either Anstruther must accept a much lower income than you, or he must have some other means of support. Moreover, you have an additional income from the royalties arising from the somewhat sensational reports you have made of two of our adventures, so his private income must be very substantial if he can afford to be away from his practice more often than you are.”
“If you must know, Holmes,” I said with some acerbity as I was reluctant to enter into discussions with Holmes on my financial situation, “I received a one-off payment of £25 for “A Study in Scarlet”. And the magazine selling the serialisation of “The Sign of Four” will retail at a shilling a copy, so my share, once all deductions have been made, is likely to be of most use for insertion into the Christmas pudding.”
“Does Anstruther have private means?” pressed Holmes, his interest not deflected by my quip.
“Not to my knowledge, although, as you say, he spends more time away from his practice than I do from mine, which makes what you say a permissible inference,” I responded cautiously. The matters that Holmes was raising were not ones I wished to discuss with him, so I again sought to divert his focus by providing additional information. “Anstruther has a passion for painting, which is why he is often away. He tells me that he favours cloudscapes and skyscapes and often goes to East Anglia to paint them. Maybe he sells them to provide himself with a second income.”
“So what are the costs of your business?” Holmes persisted, as ever responding to the thoughts that were running through my head rather than to my words.
“Really, Holmes!” I replied after a slight pause as I considered whether to respond at all. “This cannot be of concern to you. Pycroft introduced you to the notorious Beddington this evening as an accountant and this has obviously got to your head. For what it is worth, I am paying down the capital on the practice and on the house, which is also my dwelling. I additionally pay a receptionist two pounds a week as a wage and pay six shillings for her into a superannuation fund. This will pay a pension calculated as a percentage of her final salary when she retires. I also have all the outgoings of a normal householder and, to maintain the premium nature of my practice, I need to make sure the house is well maintained.”
“So your outgoings considerably exceed your income,” commented Holmes.
As usual my friend’s speed of thought process and his lack of inhibition in expressing the outcome of it quite took my breath aw